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Le Concert Royal de la Nuit with Ensemble Correspondances led by Sébastien Daucé, the glorious culmination of the finest London Festival of the Baroque in years on the theme "Treasures of the Grand Siècle". Le Concert Royal de la Nuit was Louis XIV's announcement that he would be "Roi du Soleil", a ruler whose magnificence would transform France, and the world, in a new age of splendour.

Marc-Antoine Charpentier Histoires sacrées with Ensemble Correspondances, conducted by Sébastien Daucé, at St John's Smith Square, part of the London Festival of the Baroque 2018. This striking staging, by Vincent Huguet, brought out its austere glory: every bit a treasure of the Grand Siècle, though this grandeur was dedicated not to Sun God but to God.

Revolution, repetition, rhetoric. On my way to meet countertenor Iestyn Davies, I ponder if these are the elements that might form connecting threads between the music of Henry Purcell and Michael Nyman, whose works will be brought together later this month when Davies joins the viol consort Fretwork for a thought-provoking recital at Milton Court Concert Hall.

When Francesca Zambello presented Aïda at her own Glimmerglass Opera in 2012, her staging was, as they say, “ripped from today’s headlines.” Fighter planes strafed the Egyptian headquarters as the curtain rose, water-boarding was the favored form of interrogation, Radames was executed by lethal injection.

As the bells rang with romance from the tower of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, the rolling downs of Sussex - which had just acquired a new Duke - echoed with the strains of a rather more bitter-sweet cross-cultural love affair. Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s 2018 season opened with Annilese Miskimmon’s production of Madama Butterfly, first seen during the 2016 Glyndebourne tour and now making its first visit to the main house.

This concert might have been re-titled Remembrance of Musical Times Past: the time, that is, when French song, nurtured in the Proustian Parisian salons, began to gain a foothold in public concert halls. But, the madeleine didn’t quite work its magic on this occasion.

‘On August 3, 1941, the day that Capriccio was finished, 682 Jews were killed in Chernovtsy, Romania; 1,500 in Jelgava, Latvia; and several hundred in Stanisławów, Ukraine. On October 28, 1942, the day of the opera’s premiere in Munich, the first convoy of Jews from Theresienstadt arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and 90 percent of them went to the gas chamber.’

‘I sought to restrict the music to its true purpose of serving to give expression to the poetry and to strengthen the dramatic situations, without interrupting the action or hampering it with unnecessary and superfluous ornamentations. [ ] I believed further that I should devote my greatest effort to seeking to achieve a noble simplicity; and I have avoided parading difficulties at the expense of clarity.’

‘What a thrill -/ My thumb instead of an onion. The top quite gone/ Except for a sort of hinge/ Of skin,/ A flap like a hat,/ Dead white. Then that red plush.’ Those who imagined that Sylvia Plath (‘Cut’, 1962) had achieved unassailable aesthetic peaks in fusing pain - mental and physical - with beauty, might think again after seeing and hearing this, the third, collaboration between composer George Benjamin and dramatist/librettist Martin Crimp: Lessons in Love and Violence.

Majesté, a new recording by Le Poème Harmonique, led by Vincent Dumestre, of music by Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657-1726) new from Alpha Classics. Le Poème Harmonique are regular visitors to London, appreciated for the variety of their programes. On Friday this week, (11/5) they'll be at St John's Smith Square as part of the London Festival of Baroque, with a programme titled "At the World's Courts".

New from Harmonia Mundi, Perpetual Night. a superb recording of ayres and songs from the 17th century, by Ensemble Correspondances with Sébastien Daucé and Lucile Richardot. Ensemble Correspondances are among the foremost exponents of the music of Versailles and the French royalty, so it's good to hear them turn to the music of the Stuart court.

Always in demand on French and international stages, the French soprano Sabine Devieihle is, fortunately, becoming an increasingly frequent visitor to these shores. Her first appearance at Wigmore Hall was last month’s performance of works by Handel with Emmanuelle Haïm’s Le Concert d’Astrée. This lunchtime recital, reflecting the meetings of music and minds which took place at Parisian salon of the nineteenth-century mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), was her solo debut at the venue.

Lyric Opera of Chicago is now featuring as its spring musical Jesus Christ Superstar with music and lyrics by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. The production originated with the Regent’s Park Theatre, London with additional scenery by Bay Productions, U.K. and Commercial Silk International.

As a figure in the history of 20th century art, few deserve to be closer to center stage than Ida Rubenbstein. Without her talent, determination, and vast wealth, Ravel’s Boléro, Debussy’s Martyrdom of St. Sebastien, Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake, and Stravinsky’s Perséphone would not exist.

One trusts the banquet following the world premiere of La concordia de’ pianeti proffered some spicy flavors, because Pietro Pariati’s text is so cloying it causes violent stomach-churning. In contrast, Antonio Caldara’s music sparkles and dances like a blaze of crystal chandeliers.

The 63rd Competition for the Kathleen Ferrier Awards 2018 was an unusually ‘home-grown’ affair. Last year’s Final had brought together singers from the UK, the Commonwealth, Europe, the US and beyond, but the six young singers assembled at Wigmore Hall on Friday evening all originated from the UK.

At his best, Matthias Goerne does serious (ernst) at least as well as anyone else. He may not be everyone’s first choice as Papageno, although what he brings to the role is compelling indeed, quite different from the blithe clowning of some, arguably much closer to its fundamental sadness. (Is that not, after all, what clowns are about?) Yet, individual taste aside, whom would one choose before him to sing Brahms, let alone the Four Serious Songs?

A so-called
“passion oratorio,” Brockes’s text is a fully versified
account of the Passion of Jesus, harmonized from the various Gospel accounts.
The perhaps more familiar model from Bach’s two passions is that of the
“oratorio passion,” where a single Biblical account is preserved
verbatim, with modern poetry and chorales interposed in the form of
arias and choral or congregational song. If less familiar in our day,
nevertheless Brockes’s text in its own time achieved great visibility
through its frequent publication as a devotional text and in musical settings
by Keiser (1712), Telemann (1716), Handel (1716), Mattheson (1718), Stölzel
(1725), and Fasch (1723). Portions of the poem also appear in Bach’s St.
John Passion.

Brockes was a native of Hamburg and from 1720 an active member of the
government. Telemann also had a long association with Hamburg as Kantor and
Music Director, appointments that began in 1721 and likely reveal the influence
of the poet. Several years ealier (1716), Telemann had given performances of
his setting of the Brockes Passion in Frankfort, where he was then municipal
music director and chapel master at the Barfüsserkirche; these
performances were repeated in Hamburg from 1718-1720. Thus, in at least a
professional capacity, Telemann and Brockes would have been well known to each
other. In Hamburg the requirements for new Passion settings would see Telemann
compose over forty liturgical passions, a prolific response to a common
Kantorial need. But the setting of the Brockes Passion has gained a
significance and prominence beyond its sibling works. Consequently, this
excellent new recording by René Jacobs and his forces is an especially welcome
one.

Jacobs has shaped his reading of Telemann’s colorful score with a
compelling dramatic sense. Somewhat surprisingly, the absence of prose in the
libretto does not impede the dynamism and forward motion of the narrative, and
the arias themselves are frequently short and rarely da capo.
Occasionally units cohere to create something akin to a
“cantata-as-scene.” For instance, early in the oratorio, Jesus
pleads for mercy in a lyric aria (“Mein Vater! Schau, wie ich mich
quäle”), followed by his recounting of the torments he bears in an
accompanied recitative; this is then followed by a return of the aria music to
a second stanza of text, reminiscent of structural patterns found in cantatas.
We may tarry a bit in the “cantata,” but more typical is a sense of
dramatic impulsion, animated by strong, vivid, and quick contrasts. For
instance, following Peter’s denial, the penitent disciple sings of his
regret in lamentative tones, which turn menacing with the text’s turn to
Satan’s laugh. Similarly strong contrasts are found throughout the
oratorio, including in the unusual attention given to Judas’s tortured
resolution to hang himself, immediately followed by the Daughter of
Zion’s pastoral reflection on God’s grace.

Brockes’s text imagery is drawn with a bold pen. Here, in an aria sung
by a Faithful Soul, you get both an example of the vivid nature of the language
and the characteristic dynamic of contrast:

His [Jesus’s] bloodstained back resembles Heaven
Adorned with countless rainbows,
Like signs of pure grace,
Which, where the guilty flood of our sins runs dry,
Shows us the radiant sun of his dear love
In the streams of his blood.

The vividness of Brockes’s language is well served by Telemann’s
colorful approach to the score. Obbligato instrumental lines for oboe, flutes,
recorders, and various strings are frequent, often dramatically symbolic, and
challenging. Moreover, the orchestra is also given special effects, such as the
haunting piercing of Jesus’s flesh in the sound of ponticello
string bowing. Certainly one of the more impressive aspects of the recording is
the brilliant playing of the orchestral players of Akademie für Alte Musik
Berlin, with oboist Xenia Löffler offering particularly expressive
performances. For their part, the solo singers uniformly embrace dramatic
flexibility and fluency of idiom, and do so with compelling
expertise—qualities that remind, as well, of the distinctive singing
career of Jacobs himself.

Our deep attachment to Bach’s Passions may blind us to the broader
contexts in which these beloved works arose. Telemann’s setting of the
Brockes Passion is a masterful example of the riches that await our moving
beyond the seasonally familiar; Jacobs’s performance is a most gratifying
way to begin that journey.